WASHINGTON — The shooting looked bad. But that is when the professor is at his best. A black motorist, pulled to the side of the road for a turn-signal violation, had stuffed his hand into his pocket. The white officer yelled for him to take it out. When the driver started to comply, the officer shot him dead.

The driver was unarmed.

Taking the stand at a public inquest, William J. Lewinski, the psychology professor, explained that the officer had no choice but to act.

"In simple terms," the district attorney in Portland, Ore., asked, "if I see the gun, I'm dead?"

"In simple terms, that's it," Dr. Lewinski replied.

When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions. Among the most influential voices on the subject, he has testified in or consulted in nearly 200 cases over the last decade or so and has helped justify countless shootings around the country.

Police in Norway hardly ever use their guns, a new report released by the Scandinavian country's government shows. In fact, it's been almost 10 years since law enforcement shot and killed someone, in 2006.

Perhaps the most telling instance was when terrorist Anders Breivik opened fire in 2011 and killed 77 people in Utoya and Oslo. Authorities fired back at him, all right, but only a single time. In 2014, officers drew their guns 42 times, but they fired just two shots while on duty. No one was hurt in either of those instances.

Considering that police officers in the United States have killed more than 600 people this year alone, the report certainly is eye-opening. Of course, law enforcement officials in the United States face greater threats of violence while on duty.

Guns are not central to police activity in Norway, which is one reason why the law enforcement shooting rates are so low. As in Britain, police in Norway typically patrol while unarmed and only bear arms in extenuating situations.

No less than four high-profile aviation incidents, three in the UK and one in Colombia, have rocked the aviation world within the last 24 hours. These included the loss of a shadowy Colombian Air Force CASA 235, an Embraer private jet with three of the Bin Laden family on board, a Folland Gnat performing at a huge car event, and a Spitfire that crashed during a test flight

Comment: Airplane crashes and mishaps have become increasingly common the past few months:

Could you live without debt? Most Americans say that they cannot. According to a brand new Pew survey, approximately 7 out of every 10 Americans believe that "debt is a necessity in their lives", and approximately 8 out of every 10 Americans actually have debt right now. Most of us like to think that "someday" we will get out of the hole and quit being debt slaves, but very few of us ever actually accomplish this. That is because the entire system is designed to trap us in debt before we even get out into the "real world" and keep us in debt until we die. Sadly, most Americans don't even realize what is being done to them.

In America today, debt is considered to be just part of normal life. We go into debt to go to college, we go into debt to buy a vehicle, we go into debt to buy a home, and we are constantly using our credit cards to buy the things that we think we need.

As a result, this generation of Americans is absolutely swimming in debt. The following are some of the findings of the Pew survey that I mentioned above...

*"8 in 10 Americans have debt, with mortgages the most common liability."

Last month's 118 fatalities - more than one in six of whom were unarmed - reversed a downward trend over the previous four months

July was the deadliest month of 2015 so far for killings by police after registering 118 fatalities, according to the Guardian's ongoing investigation The Counted, which now projects that US law enforcement is on course to kill more than 1,150 people this year.

The July figure brought an end to a steady decline in totals over the previous four months. After 113 people were killed in March, 101 died in April, 87 fatalities were recorded in May and 78 in June.

At least 20 people killed in July - more than one in six - were unarmed, including Samuel DuBose, who was shot by University of Cincinnati officer Ray Tensing in a 19 July traffic stop that has become the latest flashpoint in protests over the police's use of deadly force.

Of the 118 people, 106 died from gunfire, making July also the first month of 2015 in which that number has exceeded 100. Two people died after officers shocked them with Tasers, two died being struck by police vehicles, and eight died after altercations in police custody.

The Counted is recording every killing by police in the US this year because the federal government does not currently publish a comprehensive database. Instead the FBI runs a voluntary program in which agencies may submit numbers of "justifiable homicides".

Tensing had claimed DuBose dragged him with his car, but footage recorded by Tensing's body camera refuted his account. The officer was charged with murder on Wednesday, when at a press conference the Cincinnati prosecutor Joe Deters called the shooting "senseless" and said Tensing "should never have been a police officer".

Comment: Since law enforcement agencies are not required to report how many citizens they have killed, the number of people murdered by police are likely to be much higher.

A man who ran into a Dallas County jail screaming for help ended up dying when Sheriff's deputies piled on top of him and handcuffed him Saturday, WFAA reports.

The 47-year-old man, who has not been identified yet, apparently parked his car at the county jail and ran in screaming that his wife was out to kill him. But instead of helping him, witnesses told WFAA that deputies took him to the ground and handcuffed him. One had his knee on the man's neck.

"They had him in handcuffs, he wasn't fighting back, he wasn't, not letting them restrain him, he was saying, 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe,'" witness April Berryhill told the station. "One of the officers had him down on the ground with his knee on his neck."

Dallas County deputies said they were "simply trying to calm him down," reports WFAA's Sebastian Robertson.

Witnesses said deputies were using excessive force on the man, WFAA reports.

"When a person is calling for help, someone should reach out and help them, and not try to go in full-force with the person," witness Tiffany Todd White told WFAA. "Try to see what's going on with that person before you start going in and treating him like a dog."

Comment: Police, again, take another life - hopped up on the drug of authority and power.

A US cable network says that it will stage a first-ever act of exorcism live this Halloween. The event will take place on the 66th anniversary of the infamous exorcism of Roland Doe that inspired the creators of the film The Exorcist.

The 'Exorcism: Live!' show by the Destination America network will be held at the "Exorcist House" in the suburbs of St. Louis where the notorious exorcism ritual was performed by Catholic priests in 1949.

The crew consisting of the cast of Ghost Asylum series, the Tennessee Wraith Chasers and renowned psychic medium Chip Coffey promises to find out "whatever or whomever has scared Americans to death for decades" and use "state of the art" technology to air "real exorcisms" and record any otherworldly activity at the site on the 66th anniversary of the original ritual.

Police in St Petersburg have arrested an elderly pensioner suspected of killing at least a dozen people over the last two decades. RT's Ilya Petrenko followed the traces left by the serial killer.

The news about a 68-year-old "babushka" serial killer shocked St. Petersburg earlier this week. Tamara Samsonova murdered her 79-year-old companion Valentina for allegedly not washing tea cups, cut up her body into eight parts and dumped them in different places around the neighborhood.

The locals in St Petersburg's Frunzensky district started to find body parts in late July. After the first ones were found on the streets Monday, July 27, in a couple of days police picked up the right trail. It turned out that neighbors had seen Samsonova carrying large parcels out of the residential building where Valentina had disappeared from.

CCTV footage confirmed their testimony, and when police searched through Valentina's apartment, they found traces of blood and a handsaw in the bathroom.

Comment: RT reporter called Tamara Samsonova "an extraordinary psychopath". But, actually, when it comes to psychopaths, the above behavior isn't really "extraordinary" to them. This is how they roll. Some of them are just better at hiding behind the mask of sanity. And some are snakes in suits and prefer their "butchering" be done in the corporate world or on an emotional level.

A plane crash that killed three members of the bin Laden family "doesn't make sense", according to a pilot who regularly flies into Blackbushe Airport.

Speaking to Sky News, Simon Moores explained how the Phenom 300 jet, which came down over a car auction site in Hampshire on Friday, "has every conceivable state-of-the-art safety function you can possibly imagine".

He explained how the plane takes approximately 750m to 800m to land - but as Blackbushe's runway is 1,300m, there should have been no reason for the aircraft to overshoot as it arrived from Milan's Malpensa Airport.

Raising questions as to how the crash could have happened, Mr Moores asked: "Why, if (the pilot) thought his angle was completely wrong - which is what happened in this case - didn't he power up the engines, simply go round, and try again?"